Amy Einhorn started Amy Einhorn Books with the goal of hitting that sweet-spot between literary and commercial. Over her 20+ year publishing career, she has worked in very literary houses and very commercial houses—but what she found is that she enjoys a mix of both—smart, intelligent writing coupled with a page-turning story. She intends her books to be just such.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett was the first book she published under this imprint. There’s a list of all of the titles published so far here. This, of course, will grow over time. The Challenge will keep up.

The hosts of this challenge noticed how many awesome books and authors were going to be published in the upcoming months, and found themselves wanting to read most (if not all) of them. From there, it was an obvious next step to create the Reagan Arthur Books Challenge!

1. Read all the winners of the National Book Award for fiction from 1950 to present.
2. Read all the winners and finalists of the National Book Award for fiction from 1950 to present.
3. Read the winners and finalists of the National Book Award for fiction of one year.
4. Read the winners of the National Book Award for fiction of one decade.
5. Read all the books that were winners or finalists by a single author (there are several authors who were finalists and/or won in multiple years).

The Orange Prize Project
The Orange Prize recognizes notable women writers. A panel of five women, all passionate readers and at the top of their respective professions, choose the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction. Meanwhile, three women with a proven interest in new fiction, who work at a senior level in the book world, select the winner of the Orange Award for New Writers

This reading challenge is a long-term project in which the participants will read all books that have won or been short listed for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction AND the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers. There is no time limit.

The first book must have won both prizes (6 books meet this criterium), the second book is a Pulitzer Prize winner only and the third book is a National Book Award winner only.

These are my selections, subject to change:

1) Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
Proulx has followed Postcards , her story of a family and their farm, with an extraordinary second novel of another family and the sea. The fulcrum is Quoyle, a patient, self-deprecating, oversized hack writer who, following the deaths of nasty parents and a succubus of a wife, moves with his two daughters and straight-thinking aunt back to the ancestral manse in Killick-Claw, a Newfoundland harbor town of no great distinction.

2) one of:March by Geraldine Brooks (ready for pickup at the library)
Brooks’s luminous second novel, after 2001’s acclaimed Year of Wonders, imagines the Civil War experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. An idealistic Concord cleric, March becomes a Union chaplain and later finds himself assigned to be a teacher on a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves.

The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer (has been on my own shelves unread for years)
The true story of Gary Gilmore, who in 1977 became the first person executed in the United States since the reinstitution of the death penalty. Gilmore, a violent yet articulate man who chose not to fight his death-penalty sentence, touched off a national debate about capital punishment. He allowed Norman Mailer and researcher Lawrence Schiller complete access to his story. Mailer took the material and produced this immense book…What unfolds is a powerful drama, a distorted love affair, and a chilling look into the mind of a murderer in his countdown with a firing squad.

In his biggest, boldest novel yet, the much-acclaimed author of Nobody’s Fool and Straight Man subjects a full cross-section of a crumbling Maine mill town to piercing, compassionate scrutiny, capturing misfits, malefactors and misguided honest citizens alike in the steady beam of his prose.

McCann’s sweeping new novel hinges on Philippe Petit’s illicit 1974 high-wire walk between the twin towers. This extraordinary, real-life feat by French funambulist Philippe Petit becomes the touchstone for stories that briefly submerge you in ten varied and intense lives. It is the aftermath, in which Petit appears in the courtroom of Judge Solomon Soderberg, that sets events into motion.

The first book must have won both prizes (only 3 books qualify), the second book is a Man Booker Prize winner only and the third book is a James Tait Black Prize winner only.

These are my selections, subject to change:

1) Last Orders by Graham Smith
a quiet but dazzling novel about a group of men, friends since the Second World War, whose lives revolve around work, family, the racetrack, and their favorite pub. When one of them dies, the survivors drive his ashes from London to a seaside town where they will be scattered, compelling them to take stock in who they are today, who they were before, and the shifting relationships in between.
2) Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey

This is a story of mid-19th century England and Australia, narrated by a man of our time and therefore permeated with modern consciousness. Oscar is a shy, gawky, Oxford-educated Church of England minister with a tortured conscience; Lucinda is a willful, eccentric Australian who sinks her family inheritance into a glass factory; and the basis for the star-crossed love that develops between them is a shared passion for gambling; and

3) The Secret Scripture by Sebastien Barry
The latest from Barry (whose A Long Way was shortlisted for the 2005 Booker) pits two contradictory narratives against each other in an attempt to solve the mystery of a 100-year-old mental patient. That patient, Roseanne McNulty, decides to undertake an autobiography and writes of an ill-fated childhood spent with her father, Joe Clear, A cemetery superintendent who is drawn into Ireland’s 1922 civil war.

It’s likely that I’ll read 8 British novels this year, but I want to enter at the Bob’s Your Uncle level because I love that phrase, and every time I hear it, I think “No, Bob’s my father.” It’s sort of bittersweet.

Or, even better, buy from an independent book seller by searching this site that has links to independent booksellers across North America.

P.S. If you click through the affiliate links in the book titles, you may notice a different cover. I like to see the cover that’s on the copy I read – and it’s usually different than Amazon.com because they display the American release, and I read the Canadian. Again, the links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

I just have to try a few more challenges! This First in a Series Challenge, hosted by Royal Reviews, should be easy because I always look for the first book in a series when I’m reading a new author or a new series.

I generally enjoy reading prize winning literature, but find that because of availability, the prizes end up being Canadian or American.

I do however, recognize the high regard in which the Man Booker Prize, originating in Britain, is held. I’d like to read more Booker prize winning novels but I think I need to start slowly, given the number of other challenges I’ve entered already. So I’m entering the Complete Booker Challenge at the Longshot level, at which I must read 6 longlisted nominees.

I keep seeing more and more reading challenges that I want to add to the list that I’ve taken on, but am really exercising self-discipline to not over commit. I just couldn’t resist this one, though, since it’s so different from anything else I’ve entered.

The rules of the Decades Challenge are simple:
– Read a minimum of 10 books in 10 consecutive decades; books published in the 2000s do not count.

I haven’t had a chance to choose my books for this yet, but doing so will be fun!

I’ve decided to enter into a number of reading challenges around the blogosphere this year and I’ve set up a separate post for each challenge. Once this initial set-up is complete, I don’t think you’ll see my updates as I list the books I’ve read that meet the challenges. I’ll note what challenges are involved in my “What Are You Reading? Mondays” posts.

This challenge comes from the Yahoo group of the same name. It particularly appealed to me because from 2001 to 2008, I ran a business called Paradise Porch and issued a bi-weekly newsletter called The Porch Swing.

This challenge involves a minimum of seven books, and potentially 26.

1. Read two books whose title contains the first letters of your first and last names.

2. Read two books by an author whose first name begins with a “D”.

3. Read one book by a female author whose first name is Mary.

4. Read a biography.

5. Read a book of short stories

AND – BONUS POINTS!

Alphabet Challenge – this challenge consists of keeping track of each book you read that fits the letters of the alphabet.

I expect at least the sod-turning for our new village library this year, so I think this challenge is especially appropriate. Encouraged by J., I’m going to aim high and go for the “Stepping It Up” level which requires me to check out and read 75 books during the coming year.

3. A book with a title (queen, president) in the title: The Murder of King Tut, The Count of Monte Cristo, Lady Susan
4. A book with a plant in the title: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Wind in the Willows, The Name of the Rose
5. A book with a place name (city, country) in the title: Out of Africa; London; Between, Georgia
6. A book with a music term in the title: Song of Solomon, Ragtime, The Piano Teacher

The book titles are just suggestions, I can read whatever book I want to fit the category, and cross-overs from other challenges area allowed.

Hosted by Ready When You Are, C.B., the Read the Book, See the Movie Challenge is based on a simple idea–read a book, see a movie based on the book, include both in my review.

I’m choosing to try the Film Festival level – eight books & movies.

It’s not the reading that might trip me up here–it’s taking the time to watch the movies. I’m always who answers the question “Did you see this movie?” with “No, but I read the book”, much to my husband’s disgust.